Gov. Jared Polis wants to use a windfall announced well after the election to pay for one of his major campaign promises: full-day kindergarten.

His proposals for the upcoming state budget, announced Tuesday, include up to $227 million for school districts that implement free, all-day kindergarten.

“We can leverage our state’s improved economy to benefit our schools without sacrificing other budget priorities,” Polis wrote in a letter to the Joint Budget Committee.

State economists forecast in December that the state will get to keep $274 million more than expected in its 2019-20 budget. That’s because local governments are going to collect more money than previously projected, requiring less backfill from the state, Colorado Budget Director Lauren Larson said during a media briefing Tuesday.

The request to spend 80 percent of those new state dollars on kindergarten was met with skepticism Tuesday from two Democratic lawmakers on the Joint Budget Committee but received a warmer reception from a Republican JBC member, proving a point Polis made in last week’s State of the State address: “If all this that we are talking about were easy, it would have been done already.”

Some represent a new direction for the state, even though both the current governor and his predecessor are Democrats. Polis wants $2 million for an eight-week paid family leave program for state employees and another $1.3 million to start the process of seeking a federal waiver to import prescription drugs from Canada.

“These are relatively small budget items that we include, but they are very high impact,” Polis told reporters.

But the governor doesn’t get to write the budget. What he submits is more of a recommendation to the legislature, which means Polis needs the support of the General Assembly — especially the six Joint Budget Committee members — if he wants to implement the items outlined in his briefing.

Two Democratic members interviewed Tuesday — chair Dominick Moreno, a Commerce City senator, and Rachel Zenzinger, an Arvada senator — said Polis’ budget request is “very large” and might not be fulfilled during his first year in office.

Their concerns largely center on Polis’ proposed source of money for the kindergarten expansion and his decision not to address the growing need for spending on roads and other transportation infrastructure that aren’t keeping pace with an expanding population.

Zenzinger is concerned that Polis is proposing paying for full-day kindergarten with money that might disappear when the economy cools. Colorado forecasters are predicting an economic slowdown in the early part of the next decade.

“If we fund it this year, then we need to make sure that we’re funding it in the other years too,” she said.

Moreno and Zenzinger also said it could take time for schools to prepare for additional instruction capacity, especially for schools that use the same classrooms for morning and afternoon kindergarten.

Even if the Democratic members of the JBC decide against fully funding all-day kindergarten in this budget, Polis could still get the money. A lawmaker could run a bill to pay for it, and Polis also has an opportunity to win over Republican budget writers.

JBC member Bob Rankin, a Republican representative from Carbondale, said he’d get behind all-day kindergarten if the $227 million it costs would count toward paying down something called the negative factor, a debt owed to Colorado schools from the recession.

“I think it’s a fair way of reducing it,” Rankin said.

But Republicans, the minority in both chambers, aren’t united behind the idea of spending most of the newfound dollars on kindergarten. Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert, R-Parker, asked the same question Moreno did after seeing Polis’ budget: Where is the money for transportation?

Anna Staver covers politics for The Denver Post. She's spent her career writing in statehouses, courthouses and even a few fair board meetings. She and her husband fell in love with the West a decade ago and have called Oregon, Idaho and Nevada home.

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